Combat vs. Subtlety, the age-old Rogue question

This will be a continuing post, so keep an eye out for updates.

Currently, I have three rogues. 56 UD, 42 Human, 17 Orc.

My first two rogues, I began as most others do, with a pair of daggers, building up all my ambush/BS, etc. skills. My human was the first, and I discovered early on that in pvp, I was quite weak. I rarely won an even match, and often lost against lower levels. Of course, I attribute a high percentage of the blame to my own lack of experience playing a rogue, and not knowing the tricks I needed to survive.

I started Psyae the same way. And fared slightly better. Then, when I hit about level 31, someone suggested that I switch to maces. Now, I had heard of rogues using swords exclusively, but maces??? That, I thought to myself, would be insane. Well, perhaps boredom hit me, because I set out to find the best mace I could (which I'm still using at lvl 56!), the Bonesnapper, and another mace to see what would happen. Thus far, I'm thoroughly satisfied. Of course, I had to respec, but no biggie. Now, in duels, the only ones who can really beat me at my level are Shamans and Hunters, but not many of those. Well, and one rogue friend of mine, when he gets lucky.

I will eventually add to this post some MATH! That's right, for those of us anal twits who need to see the raw numbers of the differences between certain builds, I am going to do my homework, and research what's out there in all the myriad fora to find the ultimate data on whether getting dagger spec will actually increase your damage over the course of a decade by as much as .03% Impressive! Actually, I do like the math stuff, but I will iterate what many have told me, and I thoroughly believe: unless you are a POWERGAMER, and must have the ultimate best of everything (which means you play 10+ hours daily, and 48 hours on the weekend), then find a STYLE that you like, and build your character around it. (this actually goes for all classes). Otherwise, regardless of the perfect talent build you found and implemented, you won't actually see those numbers go up because you and your character are not in synch! Odd concept? Not really. Example: Let's say you exclusively play rogues, and your buddy lets you play his epic armored, perfectly specced MAGE for a few BG rounds. Guaranteed you get your arse kicked. But wait... you have everything perfect! Nah... "perfect" is relative. Start with YOU and what you enjoy, then go from there.

That being said, let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the two most common rogue builds, combat and subtlety. I'll start a list, then comment on some of the entries in the list, and I'll come back and add to the list later.

Combat Pros
(earlier levels = 0-58ish)
-more damage at earlier levels
-less costly at earlier levels (instead of having to skill up every time in BS, ambush, and a myriad of other skills, you pretty much pick SS and Evis)
-better weapons at earlier levels
-more unique (how many rogues do you see running around with two HUGE hammers?)
-swords, maces, and daggers are all good (you can main hand a sword or mace, and offhand a dagger, or many other combos; subtlety rogues tend only to use daggers or dagger/sword)

Combat Cons
-high damage, but slow to hit (i.e., don't miss!)
-no/low lead-in damage (i.e., most combat rogues go for CS, which doesn't do any damage at first, but gives you 2 CP; this gives classes like the mage, that can blink, a distinct advantage even if you hit first; whereas the subtlety rogue does an insane amount of damage up front. if you're doing combat, you must have patience, and deal with the fact that you don't really show your stuff till you get a 5CP Evis)
-lack of end-game weapons? (I'll get back to you on this, but there are some nice maces/swords out there)
-sucky 7th tier talent

Subtlety Pros
-more stealthiness earlier on = easier questing, easier soloing, and pvp survivability
-imp sap, anyone?
-with new patches, many more end-game daggers do nice damage and have some awesome attributes
-preparation

Subtlety Cons
-if you miss your opening, or don't get another opportunity to BS/ambush in a fight, your overall damage is reduced significantly
-many more keys/macros/combos, etc. to keep track of. (if you're clumsy at the keyboard (like me), you might have a tough time dancing all about like a subtlety rogue needs to; however, practice makes perfect)
-spelling "subtlety" quickly while in combat

more soon!

Now, you may ask, why in hells did you make another rogue after Psyae? Good question. It's because I want one of each. I'm greedy. I started my new Orc rogue out with daggers, but it was taking SO long to kill stuff, that I grabbed the first sword, and finally mace that I could. I think ultimately my Orc rogue will end up being my combat rogue, and Psyae will respec to Subtlety. The fact is, from my experience, it seems much easier to solo pve (and kick some quite surprised butt in pvp) with a combat/mace build until you get to about lvl 57, where you can finally start collecting all your sets and epic gear and whatnot, that I just don't have the time or effort to do. Also, it'll be a great opportunity for me to enhance this post, actually having both builds simultaneously.